An alleged "murder dentist" in Colorado. Hawaii husband takes the stand at his second murder trial. And Keith talks about his latest podcast series.

26m
Listen to this week's episode of the Dateline: True Crime Weekly podcast with guest host, Blayne Alexander. A dentist already facing murder charges for allegedly poisoning his wife is back in court. This time he's accused of plotting to murder four other people from behind bars. In Honolulu, a man accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist ex-lover takes the stand in his own defense. More from the courtroom ahead of the trials of Karen Read and Bryan Kohberger. Plus, Keith Morrison talks about the unusual clue that broke the case wide open in his latest podcast series, "Murder in the Moonlight".

Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com

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Runtime: 26m

Transcript

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Speaker 16 Hey, Jim, is it cold and miserable out?

Speaker 17 You're listening into a story meeting at Dateline headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Center.

Speaker 18 It's raining, but it's actually pretty mild.

Speaker 17 Our editorial team is catching up on breaking crime news around the country.

Speaker 19 So there's one ex-boyfriend who's a suspect for a while.

Speaker 16 OutWest, Josh pointed this out last night, Josh Mankowitz.

Speaker 19 So many crazy things have happened. This is the third defense team he's had.

Speaker 17 Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Blaine Alexander, in for Andrea Canning, who's off off this week.
It's February 20th, and here's what's on our docket.

Speaker 17 In Hawaii, a man accused of murdering his wife's acupuncturist ex-lover took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 20 Did you kill John Tokohara?

Speaker 21 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 17 And we've got this week's roundup of top crime stories, including the arrest of the leader of a group called the Zizians, which prosecutors believe is connected to six violent deaths.

Speaker 17 Big rulings on defense motions in Idaho for Brian Koberger, and drama in the latest pretrial hearing in the Karen Reed case.

Speaker 22 Reed was in court on Tuesday for a motions hearing when all of a sudden the judge suspended it.

Speaker 17 Plus, Keith Morrison will be here to fill us in on his latest podcast series, Murder in the Moonlight.

Speaker 23 Somebody found a gold ring in a place where it didn't belong. Did it belong to the killer?

Speaker 5 And then you go on a long and winding pathway to find the truth.

Speaker 17 But before all that, we're heading back to Aurora, Colorado, where a dentist awaiting trial on charges of allegedly murdering his wife was back in court last week facing new charges.

Speaker 17 It all started back in 2023. James Craig was arrested for the first-degree murder of his wife, Angela.

Speaker 17 Prosecutors say he poisoned her protein shakes with potassium cyanide and tetrahydrozylene, which is found in eye drops.

Speaker 17 Now, if this sounds familiar, it might be because we've talked about the case on the podcast here before last November, when Craig was set to go to trial.

Speaker 17 That is, until his defense team withdrew at the last minute on the day that jury selection was set to begin. Our NBC affiliate, KUSA9 News in Denver, reported on that development.

Speaker 24 He told the judge he'd received new records in the case and asked to withdraw as Craig's attorney. Barely 24 hours after that, prosecutors accused Craig of plotting murder and false testimony.

Speaker 17 At a hearing last week, we finally got to hear more about the murders that the prosecution says Craig had planned.

Speaker 17 Dateline producer Tim Ulinger was in the courtroom, and he joins us now to tell us what he learned and where the case could go next. Tim, thank you so much for being here with us.

Speaker 25 Thank you so much for having me. This story is really

Speaker 25 crazy to say.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's got tons of twists and turns. So just to start, can you quickly just remind us, remind our listeners of the original crime that James Craig was accused of, the murder of his wife, Angela?

Speaker 25 Yes, Blaine.

Speaker 25 Angela and James had been married for about 23 years. James had a dental practice where Angela at times worked as an office manager.

Speaker 25 In March of 2023, about two years ago, she had been feeling sick for several weeks and had been making trips to the ER. And on her final trip, she was admitted in grave condition and then died.

Speaker 25 According to the arrest warrant, James Craig's business partner told a nurse at the hospital that James had recently ordered potassium cyanide for the dental practice.

Speaker 25 The nurse called police and Craig was arrested the next day.

Speaker 17 Wow. Okay.
So I guess that begs the question. Did Craig have any explanation for why he had that potassium cyanide?

Speaker 25 Well, according to the arrest warrant, James told his business partner Angela had asked him to order the potassium cyanide, and he believed she was suicidal.

Speaker 17 So what are investigators saying about a motive? What are they pointing to there?

Speaker 25 Well, there were emails, sexually explicit conversations, and travel plans with a woman who was not Angela, first of all.

Speaker 25 And then according to the arrest warrant, Angela's sister told police the marriage had always been tumultuous and that James had multiple affairs and had drugged Angela in the past.

Speaker 17 Okay, so fast forward to last fall and Craig is hit with the other charges, solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury. What do we know about those accusations?

Speaker 25 Well, Blaine, during the hearing last week, prosecutors revealed that Craig allegedly plotted to have four people killed.

Speaker 25 Prosecutors said Craig tried to get fellow inmate Nathaniel Harris to kill the lead detective investigating Angela's murder, another officer and two other inmates who were in the same detention facility.

Speaker 17 Those are some mighty explosive allegations. My goodness.

Speaker 25 Yes, there are.

Speaker 17 Tim, you were in court for this hearing. What did we learn about the prosecution's case?

Speaker 25 The hearing took almost three hours and prosecutors called two witnesses.

Speaker 25 One of the witnesses, a sergeant from the sheriff's office, said in an interview, Harris, that other inmate, had told him Craig offered him $20,000.

Speaker 25 Craig then allegedly contacted Harris's ex-wife by two letters and offered, quote, essentially a blank check to help make up evidence of texts, phone records, photos, et cetera.

Speaker 17 Okay, Tim, so prosecutors are saying that these letters were part of Craig's plan to fabricate evidence.

Speaker 17 But I'm curious, through all of this, did James Craig have any sort of visible reaction as prosecutors were talking through all of this new evidence?

Speaker 25 Well, at one point, Blaine, during the preliminary hearing,

Speaker 25 he had been referred to as quote-unquote the murder dentist. And I did see him flinch at that point.

Speaker 17 Craig is now on his third defense team. What did his lawyers have to say at the hearing?

Speaker 25 The new attorney said there wasn't any testing or verification of the handwriting in those letters to tie it back to Craig.

Speaker 25 But the judge ultimately decided that the prosecution had the evidence that they needed for the burden for the charges to be brought to trial.

Speaker 17 And what's notable, this is not the first time that Craig has been accused of interfering with his case from jail, right?

Speaker 17 Prosecutors say that he has allegedly asked other inmates to help him fabricate evidence twice before this.

Speaker 25 Yes, it's really unusual.

Speaker 25 Last May, a detective said at a hearing that James Craig had asked a fellow inmate to help place letters at his house that would seem to have been written by Angela, stating that she was suicidal.

Speaker 25 James allegedly promised the inmate free dental work or to post bail in exchange for help.

Speaker 25 The defense said the inmate had glaring credibility issues, including an active arrest warrant when he contacted police.

Speaker 25 Then, last September, a detective testified that James had sent a letter to a man who had been in jail with him, asking him to help him find women who would be willing to testify that they had had an affair with him.

Speaker 25 And that when Andrew learned about the affairs, she asked the women to help her frame James for a crime.

Speaker 17 So it seems, Tim, that we know a lot about the prosecution's case from evidence that they've talked about in documents or in hearings in court.

Speaker 17 What do we know about what James Craig's defense is going to look like?

Speaker 25 Well, it's a little difficult on that right now because they haven't really had a chance to present what they might want to do in trial.

Speaker 25 And we always have to remember, you know, innocent until proven guilty.

Speaker 25 So far, based on what James has told investigators, he seems to be sticking to his story that Angela was having suicidal thoughts and may have poisoned herself.

Speaker 25 So there's a lot we don't know. He's pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and to two charges of tampering with evidence.
Last week, he also pleaded not guilty to those new charges.

Speaker 25 But ultimately, we're really waiting for a trial to hear what the defense's case is.

Speaker 17 Any idea of when we will actually see a trial in this?

Speaker 25 Well, you know, as you know, the trial has been moved three different times, but we do think it may start in the middle of July and lead up until probably the beginning of August.

Speaker 17 So we'll be watching very closely this summer. Tim, thank you so much for following all of this and joining us today.

Speaker 25 Oh, thank you so much, Brian. Take care.

Speaker 17 Up next, a Hawaii man is standing trial for the second time on charges he murdered his wife's ex-lover. Last week, jurors got to hear from him for themselves.

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Speaker 17 in honolulu it's the final days of eric thompson's murder trial he's accused of killing john tokuhara the acupuncturist his wife had a brief affair with back in 2022 he and his lawyers were undecided until the last minute on eric taking the stand in his own defense But Thursday afternoon, he was sworn in.

Speaker 17 And he stayed on the stand for three days.

Speaker 17 Dateline associate producer Kelly Moody was inside the courtroom and she joins me now to tell us what Eric says happened between him and his wife Joyce and what he was doing that January evening when John Tokuhara died.

Speaker 17 Kelly, thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 29 Yeah, you bet.

Speaker 17 First, just kind of remind us what Eric Thompson is accused of.

Speaker 29 Yeah, so Eric Thompson is charged with murder in the second degree. John Takahara was killed in January of 2022.
It was his mother who actually found him devastating.

Speaker 29 A month later, Eric Thompson was arrested, and the prosecution says that he disguised himself, that he parked his truck down the street from John's clinic and burned the clothes that he was wearing afterward.

Speaker 29 But he had made a mistake, according to the prosecution, by dropping this white white bucket hat. The hat was then tested.

Speaker 29 And in the first trial, a criminalist from the Honolulu PD Crime Lab testified that it was only likely that it was Thompson's DNA that was on the hat, but it wasn't 100% conclusive.

Speaker 17 What is the defense saying in all of this?

Speaker 29 So the defense has argued and now Eric has testified that he wasn't angry at John and never confronted him about this affair.

Speaker 29 And then his alibi was that he was actually on a completely different part of the island dumping construction waste at the time that John was shot.

Speaker 29 And Eric's first trial back in July to August of 2023 actually ended in a hung jury. So this is the second go-around.

Speaker 17 Yeah. So far, it's been pretty similar to the first trial, right? Are the same witnesses being called here?

Speaker 29 Yeah, the prosecution has made pretty much the same case and called a lot of the same witnesses, including two of the men whose partners also had affairs with John Takahara.

Speaker 29 One of the men was the first person that police had actually looked at, Daryl Fujita.

Speaker 15 He was dating my ex-ex-girlfriend.

Speaker 3 It's all good.

Speaker 25 Whatever.

Speaker 29 The prosecution is saying we looked at them and we ruled them out, leaving then Eric Thompson as their sole suspect.

Speaker 17 So one of the big pieces in all of this is that white bucket hat. What's happening with the new testing on that hat?

Speaker 29 Yeah, the white bucket hat is the proverbial glove, if you will. For Eric's second trial, the prosecution asked a new lab called CyberGenetics to look at the evidence.

Speaker 29 And the short story here is that the inside of the crown of the hat and the side of the hat show that Daryl Fujita did not wear that hat.

Speaker 29 And Eric Thompson was 16.4 trillion times more likely to have worn the hat. On Cross, defense notes that different pieces of evidence were actually stored together.

Speaker 29 And they're then implying that this could have been cross-contamination.

Speaker 17 On Thursday, Eric Thompson took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 29 Right. So it took a bit for them to actually decide if Eric was going to take the stand himself in the second trial.
He did in the first trial.

Speaker 29 As the defense was questioning him, they talked a lot about his relationship with his wife, Joyce. They were high school sweethearts.
They showed their prom photos.

Speaker 29 Eric said that their relationship was definitely one where opposites attracted, that they each did their own thing, which, of course, was aiming at countering what the prosecution had said in opening statements that he was controlling and that they had the surveillance cameras on the house that he was looking at when he was away.

Speaker 21 I let her do her thing. I probably didn't even pick out that suit myself.

Speaker 21 I think Joyce took care of everything.

Speaker 17 And of course, the big elephant in the room is his wife's affair, right? Has Eric testified about it and how has he reacted to that portion of this?

Speaker 29 So Eric has testified that they were able to put the affair behind them and they've been able to carry on with normal life. So he talked a lot about what happened on January 12, 2022 for him.

Speaker 29 That's the day that John Tokahara died. So he testifies that he had a pretty normal day.
He had been doing a lot of construction around his house and he was driving a bunch of bricks over to the dump.

Speaker 29 And then later in the evening, he went to the grocery store to buy this special milk that they give their toddler.

Speaker 21 Whole plus THA. It's good for brain development.

Speaker 29 So we always try and get it to to a grand and you went to buy beer where were you going to get beer from any lungs i like natural ice beer nadi ice nadi ice yeah and a lot of that movement was captured on the thompson security cameras as well as neighboring surveillance cameras what's going on in your mind how how are you and joy doing um

Speaker 20 better than ever pretty good were there any triggers at this point regarding John Tokuhara? Was it was he on your mind? Was there any angst or anger?

Speaker 4 No, not at all.

Speaker 21 I mean, no, that was, it wasn't an issue at all for months.

Speaker 17 But then, of course, he faced cross-examination by the prosecution. Were they able to land any blows, anything major there?

Speaker 29 Cross has been pretty focused on doing a compare and contrast of Eric's testimony at his first trial and what he's saying now.

Speaker 30 You made her call up her parents and admit that she was having an affair, correct?

Speaker 25 Eventually, that call did happen. I mean,

Speaker 25 it was part of it, it's complex.

Speaker 30 In your previous testimony, you said you wanted her to own up to it, right?

Speaker 25 I'm not sure.

Speaker 30 If you could please turn to exhibit 402,

Speaker 30 page 155. Let me know when your

Speaker 30 memory is refreshed.

Speaker 25 Yes, I did say that.

Speaker 17 What is left to go in this trial?

Speaker 29 It's off to the jury, so now we are waiting to see what will be the verdict in the second trial for Eric Thompson.

Speaker 17 This is truly a fascinating case. Kelly, thanks so much.

Speaker 29 Yeah, you're welcome.

Speaker 17 Coming up, it's Dateline Roundup: big rulings from the judge and Brian Koberger's case, drama at the courthouse before Karen Reed's second trial, and more about the arrest of the leader of a cult-like group called the Zizians, which police have connected to murders from Pennsylvania to California.

Speaker 17 Plus, Keith Morrison will be here to talk about Murder in the Moonlight, his latest podcast series.

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Speaker 17 Welcome back. Joining us for this week's Dateline Roundup is Dateline super producer Rachel White.
Hi, Rachel.

Speaker 22 Hey, Blaine, how are you?

Speaker 17 I'm good. Glad to have you with us.
So we've got a lot to talk about. First up, we are off to Dedham, Massachusetts for an update in the Karen Reed case.

Speaker 17 And you'll remember, she's the woman accused of drunkenly backing her SUV into her police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, back in 2022 and leaving him to die in the snow.

Speaker 22 Yeah, as our listeners might remember, Reed went to trial, but there was a hung jury. And so her retrial is set to start in April.

Speaker 17 Okay, so what's the news that we have in the run-up to this retrial?

Speaker 22 So Reed was in court on Tuesday for a motions hearing when all of a sudden, about halfway through the day, the judge suspended it. And this is what she said when she addressed the courtroom.

Speaker 35 Commonwealth just provided the court with information that causes me grave concern.

Speaker 35 The implications of that information may have profound effects on this defense and defense counsel.

Speaker 17 So what information is the judge talking about here?

Speaker 22 She didn't say exactly, but just before she ended the hearing, the prosecution was discussing the defense's contracting of a company called ARCA. And ARCA works on accident reconstruction.

Speaker 22 And if you remember in Reed's first trial, the defense brought two ARCA experts to the stand and they testified that the damage on Reed's SUV could not have been from hitting a pedestrian, i.e.

Speaker 22 John O'Keefe.

Speaker 22 The prosecution is now alleging that the defense withheld information from the prosecution and the court about those contracted experts.

Speaker 22 And they say that the defense never disclosed that the experts received $23,000 for their testimony, nor that the defense collaborated with the experts on that testimony.

Speaker 22 The jury was told that they were retained independently.

Speaker 17 Wow. So those are some pretty big accusations about testimony.
That was really important for the defense. So what happens next year?

Speaker 22 So the hearing's been rescheduled for next week. So we'll see if the judge shares any more information about her decision to end the hearing early.

Speaker 22 And we'll see if she allows those experts back for Reed's second trial, which again is set for April.

Speaker 17 Next, let's let's go to Idaho, and there is some big news in the case of Brian Koberger, the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students back in 2022.

Speaker 17 Rachel, what did we learn about this one?

Speaker 22 Well, Blaine, there's a gag order in place, so there's a lot that the public still doesn't know about this case.

Speaker 22 But as the court has been gearing up for the summer's trial, there have been some hearings that talk about possible evidence in the case.

Speaker 22 So we've known for a while now that Koberger was initially charged with the murders based on detectives allegedly matching his DNA to DNA found on a knife sheath left at the crime scene.

Speaker 22 But his defense has made this bombshell new claim. They revealed recently that detectives found blood at the crime scene from two additional males, both of whom are still unidentified.

Speaker 17 So the defense here is possibly laying the groundwork for alternate suspects, right? Do we know where that blood was found at the scene?

Speaker 22 One male's blood was found on a railing inside the house where the four students were killed, and a different male's blood was found on a glove outside the house.

Speaker 22 Koberger's defense alleges that the police failed to disclose those unidentified blood samples to a judge when they sought that warrant for Koberger's arrest in December of 2022.

Speaker 22 And the prosecution has not disputed it.

Speaker 17 So the defense was arguing the arrest warrant should be thrown out.

Speaker 17 But just this Wednesday, Judge Stephen Hipler issued his ruling on the defense's motions to suppress the DNA information, arrest warrants, and Koberger's cell phone data.

Speaker 17 So all of that will actually be allowed in the trial this summer.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 17 Finally, we're off to Western Maryland for an update in a case that we first told you about a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 17 Investigators linked the murders of an elderly man in California, a husband and wife in Pennsylvania, and the fatal shooting of a Vermont border guard to a group of young people called the Zizians.

Speaker 17 What's the news there, Rachel?

Speaker 22 So the group's leader, known as Ziz, legal name Jack Lasota, was arrested last weekend in Western Maryland.

Speaker 22 Lasota was charged with trespassing, trespassing, having a handgun in a vehicle, and obstructing and hindering, all of which are misdemeanors.

Speaker 17 Now, police have arrested someone else here, too.

Speaker 22 Yeah, two other people, in fact.

Speaker 22 One, Michelle Zyko, another Zizian who was a person of interest in the Vermont Border Guard shooting, plus the murders of that Pennsylvania couple who were actually Zyko's parents.

Speaker 22 Zyko was also only charged with misdemeanors.

Speaker 17 Rachel, thanks so much for bringing us all of that. We are so glad to have you on today.

Speaker 22 Thank you, Blaine.

Speaker 17 For our final story this week, we we are joined by a very special guest, the most special of guests, Keith Morrison, is here to talk about his brand new original podcast, Murder in the Moonlight.

Speaker 17 Hi, Keith.

Speaker 4 Hello, Blaine. Thank you for having me on your program today.

Speaker 17 Well, I'm so glad to have you here. This story, this is a fascinating one.
It starts in Murdoch, Nebraska. It's a small farming town.

Speaker 17 And you have this line in there in the first episode that I love where it says, heads turn when a stranger drives by.

Speaker 17 And it really feels like that kind of small town where everybody knows everybody, where that really is true.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 6 A small, very cohesive town.

Speaker 1 And one of the finest families in town was headed by a couple who

Speaker 6 were just about as fine as a husband and wife could be.

Speaker 4 They'd raised a wonderful family.

Speaker 6 They'd run a successful agricultural business.

Speaker 4 They had done everything that they should do.

Speaker 23 They'd done it all right for many years.

Speaker 4 And then something happened.

Speaker 10 The minister called and they said, you remember

Speaker 36 being killed? Never in a million years would you think that you'd see your parents' house taped off, the farm taped off by that yellow tape.

Speaker 23 Investigators focused early on somebody close to the victim who was a bit of a ne'er-do-well.

Speaker 4 And he and a cousin of his were pinned for the crime. Then the question was, did they do it or didn't they do it? In fact, one of them confessed.

Speaker 5 So that kind of made it look pretty obvious that they did.

Speaker 4 But things developed from there.

Speaker 23 I don't want to give away too much, you know.

Speaker 17 No, but that's, that's one heck of a tease. You know, a couple of things about this podcast standout.
We get to see two very different sides of an investigation.

Speaker 17 There's some really great detective work that happens, and then there's some not so great detective work that happens.

Speaker 17 And so investigators figure out pretty quickly that there were two people in the house that night.

Speaker 17 How did they even do that?

Speaker 4 One of the titles that we thought we might choose for our story, we didn't in the end, but we were thinking about it, was blood shadow. And the reason was a rifle was fired at one of the victims.

Speaker 4 It created a blood spatter, which traveled across a hallway and hit a wall.

Speaker 6 But on the wall was a person shape where there was no blood spatter,

Speaker 5 which indicated that there was somebody else involved in addition to the main shooter.

Speaker 17 Interesting.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 17 How's that for highlighting some detective work? So the story starts in Murdoch, Nebraska, but it doesn't stay there.

Speaker 17 It ends up being a multi-state investigation involving several law enforcement agencies, right?

Speaker 6 It was a crime that was solved until it wasn't solved.

Speaker 23 It was wrapped up quite neatly in a bow, and then suddenly, oh, maybe not.

Speaker 4 This was a story in which there is, and it doesn't happen that often, but I like to point it out when it does.

Speaker 4 You're familiar with the term MacGuffin, which is that kind of small, apparently insignificant thing that eventually turns a tail on its head.

Speaker 5 This story has a

Speaker 23 pure MacGuffin. It's just quite an interesting one.

Speaker 4 You know, somebody found a gold ring in a place where it didn't belong in an otherwise scrupulously clean kitchen and nobody could figure out who it belonged to. So

Speaker 23 whose was it and where did it come from? Then you go on a long and winding pathway to find the truth.

Speaker 17 So we've got some sound from an upcoming episode. It features an unsuspecting woman in Buffalo, New York, who was running a jewelry manufacturing business.

Speaker 17 Police asked for her help in tracking down who might have bought the ring just in case it was one of the killers.

Speaker 37 Here's that sound. So I started with just box number one,

Speaker 37 stores one through 25,

Speaker 37 then box number two, stores 25 through 30.

Speaker 23 And you went through each one?

Speaker 29 Yes.

Speaker 37 Until I got to like 100 and I believe it was 108 or 118, I said, this is going to be impossible.

Speaker 23 How long did that process take?

Speaker 37 It took me probably three days and two nights.

Speaker 23 Does that seem a little over the top? I mean, you could look for an hour or so and say, well, I can't find it. Sorry.

Speaker 4 And that would be that.

Speaker 35 I heard homicide.

Speaker 37 I heard it was important.

Speaker 4 The woman you've just heard is, in my mind, the hero of the story because she goes above and beyond.

Speaker 3 There were a lot of old files.

Speaker 4 You know, she had to go through stacks and stacks and stacks of them, which she did one by one to look at all the invoices for all the gold rings that were ordered from that jewelry shop in Buffalo.

Speaker 23 The question of whether she finds it or not or finds out where it went would become crucial to this entire investigation.

Speaker 17 Yeah, this was definitely a fascinating one, Keith. I can't wait to listen to the entire series.
It's fantastic. And next week, episodes will be dropping on Monday and Wednesday.

Speaker 17 So, Keith, we've got a lot of stuff to look forward to. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Blaine.

Speaker 4 Take care.

Speaker 17 That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. Andrea Canning will be right back here with you next week.

Speaker 17 If you want to find out more about the cases featured on our podcast, check out our website at dateline truecrimeweekly.com.

Speaker 17 And to get ad-free listening for all of our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium.

Speaker 17 Coming up this Friday on Dateline, Andrea has an all-new two-hour episode: two schoolgirls murdered in the woods of Delphi, Indiana. For years, the case went unsolved.

Speaker 17 Police were at a standstill, except for one clue, a grainy picture and a gravelly voice captured on one of the girls' cell phones.

Speaker 5 They had to be scared out of their minds.

Speaker 17 The voice of the killer. Voice of the killer.
Could these girls help solve their own mystery?

Speaker 17 Watch A Walk in the Woods, airing this Friday at 9-8 Central on NBC, or stream it starting Saturday on Peacock.

Speaker 17 Thanks so much for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson.
Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey.

Speaker 17 Our senior producer is Liz Brown Kuriloff. Production and fact-checking help by Sara Kadir.
Veronica Mazeka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer.
Original music by Jesse McGenti.

Speaker 17 Ryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline.

Speaker 35 Okay, anything else?

Speaker 18 All right, thanks very much.

Speaker 17 Bye-bye.

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